22: One Thing We Do Know for Certain

December 16th, 2014
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24 mins 6 secs

About this Episode

Today we talked briefly about the way the mainstream media and social media covered what’s now being called “the Sydney siege”. There are now whole articles about the extent of the various rumours circulating yesterday.

There was a fascinating flurry of excitement late last night after people on Twitter offered to support people who were nervous about travelling on public transport and they devised the illridewithyou hashtag, which had the interesting result that everything was positive and constructive for about five minutes before people started criticising it for being narcissistic and making a hostage situation all about how great Twitter was.

There was also the question of the flag displayed in the window of the cafe, described almost universally in the early stages as an "islamic" flag. Like a Christian flag. As people on Twitter pretty swiftly pointed out, that's called Arabic.

American gun lobbyists are getting on board with their opinions about gun control as well.

What we do know for certain is that media hysteria is alive and well.

Today’s guest is the excellent Kaz Cooke, who was talking about brooches.